Re: [Cz-L] Two Most Interesting Questions!

Mostly I agree with what Josif Weisman wrote in answer to the two questions,
but here are my two bits.

Answer to question 1:
The line between the upper and lower districts of Czernowitz,
in terms of wealth and adherence to religion and Yiddish versus German
speakers, changed over time and was never along a precise line.
My great-grandparents are a case in point: in 1880 they lived on the
Tempelgasse, later they moved to the Karolinengasse, #4, which is actually
further north and closer to the lower town. The families of many members
of this list lived on Karolinengase #4, most of them neither poor nor well
to do. The older people speaking mostly Yiddish and the younger ones -
German, since that it what they were taught in school.
My grandparents also lived there, but in 1923 or 24 built their own factory
and house on the Schmidtgasse, not far from the Volksgarten.
If I would have to draw a line between upper and lower Czernowitz, I would
draw this line from the Ringplatz through the Russische Gasse going east and
a much less well defined collection of streets going west and north.

What this division does not take into account are all the Jewish families
who lived in the suburbs; mostly in Manasteriska, which is actually in
the south-west of Czernowitz. There lived the Jews who wanted to live
in a village setting and who, like my paternal grandparents, were also very,
very poor. There too, the older generation spoke mostly Yiddish and those
born after 1905 - German. Funnily, often the people born there were most
eager to speak German, even though very poorly, because in Czernowitz,
speaking German was a sign of belonging to the upper crust.

Answer to question 2: In my opinion, in the 1930ies all Jewish people
in Czernowitz knew Yiddish. So did also a lot of non-Jews. But mostly,
this was Czernowitz Yiddish, with a quite different pronunciation from
literary- Litvak Yiddish.

I would like to make another distinction; there were in Czernowitz, those
who had had a very good education in Yiddish, spoke and wrote it well
and spoke it with pride. On the other hand there were those who spoke it,
because they either did not know German, or did not feel comfortable
speaking it.

Here a little story:
Austrian friends of mine, recently told me that they had heard Aharon
Appelfeld being interviewed on Austrian radio and learned that he was
from Czernowitz. Just like I.
They asked me whether he was very old, because according to them,
he had spoken very haltingly.
To this I replied: No, he is not very old, about 78 or 79, but all of us
Czernowitzers are likely to speak German haltingly, in order to be sure
that we speak correct German.

Mimi

On 7/11/11 7:03 AM, "Edgar Hauster" <bconcept_at_hotmail.com> wrote:

> Czernowitzers...
>
> For some time past, I'm conducting a correspondence with Janina Wurbs, who
> participated in the research field studies in Moghilev-Podolski, organized by
> Petersburg Judaica in 2007 and 2008. I reported on this project in December
> 2010:
>
> http://hauster.blogspot.com/2010/12/mohyliv-podilskyi-ghetto.html
>
[snip]
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Received on 2011-07-11 11:56:18